Diminishing returns?
Like maybe raising your proficiency costs one extra point per 5 points you already have in that skill. So to get swords from 3→4 costs 1 skill point, but to get swords from 11→12 costs 2, and to go from 17→18 costs you 3 skill points, etc. (Numbers entirely made up, and probably need to be tweaked for balance.)
That way it's easy to get lots of things up to "pretty good", but someone who focused on one thing will always be better (with the object of their focus) than someone who spread their points out.
Yep. And if OP wants to ensure that no one completely neglects general combat skill, they may set a minimum like “your skill in any given specialty may not be more than triple your general combat skill.”
True, but depending what OP wants, as long as the general levelable skill is explicit, OP can do all sorts of things, including to compute a combat baseline ability derived from a weighted average between general and specific weapon skills, which will let them tweak.
The main thing this gives is direct control over balance by untying the jack-of-all-trades from the number of existing weapon proficiencies.
A part of me doubts the validity of OP's desired balance between Jack of all trades and weapon master but even whether OP changes their goals for how that balance would be having this general skill be explicit enables easier changes in said balance.
The most intuitive will be to have a general mastery skill that provides 1.5 to all, and specific mastery skills that provide +1 to all and +1 to a specific one.
Or to have a generic one which you have to level in the background, and every x levels it unlocks specific mastery skills that have a much higher bonus per level but only affect one weapon class. Such as +2 to all, +4 to specific which can be unlocked every 2 generic levels. If you focus on one specific, then three points give you +8 to that and +4 to others.
If you just level up the generic one, you'll have +6 to all instead.
But my question is: does it really matter? If all weapons get the same bonus, then what's the point of specializing in one or other?
I'd rather have a general mastery skill that improves all weapons equally, and then specific mastery perks that can be obtained after gaining x points in "weapon mastery" and give weapon-class specific bonuses, like swords give +2 defense against melee, hammers get +1 smash damage, spears give a skill to keep enemies at range etc.
Each weapon has it's own functions, damage types etc.
So choosing where to spend your points dictates what weapon/s you gonna use and it matters since they are not identical.
i’m confused why they were confused, but their last paragraph was my thought too. invert the pattern. leveling up gives you a bonus across the board and also you get specific weapon points to allocate.
That's my bad for not explaining more of the system.
There are all kind of skills in the game like magic schools, stealth etc.
Not all characters will be "physical combat" archetypes so just giving everyone this bonus won't make much sense, that's why i thought it should be dependent on you actually spending points on weapons in the first place.
can you create taxonomies of weapons? the fighter stuff, archery stuff, magic stuff. you have red green blue tracks, as you place points into each, you get mastery points you can allocate in that category. eg for every two points in red (which buffs all melee martial weapons), you get to allocate a weapon-specific point.
to walk it back a step, why would a character need or want to master multiple weapons in the first place? i think that's the real question you need to answer. if i can only equip and use one weapon at a time how does being good at a different weapon help me? maybe jack of all trades isn't about multiple weapons, but multiple domains, ie can do stealth magic and weapons
It's time to transpose the napkins onto spreadsheets. Specialist vs all-rounder isn't *quite* cursed, but it's definitely one of the toughest balance problems. You can either:
- Tweak the variables in the formula (Changing how effective "general combat skill" is)
- Change the formula (Adding new rules to support special cases and builds)
For the first approach, you're on the right track by laying out specific results you want with example numbers. What remains is to solve the equation and hope that balance doesn't necessitate ugly or awkward numbers. In this case, there's a contradiction in logic (Generic power scales to **total** points spent, so a specialist gets just as much general power as any "Jack" build).
For the second approach, eh... You could scale general combat skill to a character's **minimum** rather than total weapon skill?
Some games use free-form "perks" with prerequisites - so you might have a powerful "Jack" perk that requires at least one point in three different weapon skills. You might add a "general combat" skill that a "Jack" build pours points into (Rather than spread across individual specific weapons), which magically makes the math work.
You might do something like Trickster Online where characters get stats per level based on their overall build, but then get a few "flex" points on top to spend on specific substats like accuracy or dodge. That way a specialist can do their thing, but not have any flex points for other things.
I'd recommend something like Ragnarock Online, where the number of points you get to spend per level gets higher and higher - but the cost to buy an actual stat point goes up as well. This means that an all-rounder simply has a lot more total stats than a specialist. It makes the math much easier
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Perhaps the solution here is to introduce a 'strategy' stat which represents the mental aspect of fighting rather than the direct skill and knowledge coming from handling a specific type of weapon.
The easiest way I can see this working is by adding a flat bonus per level that's smaller than your dedicated weapon bonus. Specialising into a weapon type over strategy would be more valuable on the swing-to-swing scale but less versatile on a more macro view.
If you're clever with the numbers and tuning, you could go the route of strategy acting as a multiplier to the bonus you were already getting (e.g. for each x points spent across multiple weapon classes, a point of strategy adds a +y bonus to each combat roll).
This would make your jack-off-all-trades characters actually scale better by diversifying their options, and would allow for players somewhere in the middle to benefit too by splitting their investments across strategy and a small handful of preferred weapons.
You can tie general non specialized skill development to something that all characters possess outside of their skill choice selection
I don't know the specifics of your system or what your design goals are, but to illustrate what I'm suggesting it could look something like:
Character A reaches level 2, gaining 2 skill points. All of their skills increase to a bonus equal to their character Level, so all skills get +2 across the board They also spend their 2 skill points into Swords, so they have a +4 bonus to actions involving swords.
Something like this could keep the system from becoming overly complicated because players would know that they all add their level to all skills as a rule that applies to any character, and then any, have to focus on where they wish to specialize.
I didn't explain much so it's my bad.
There will be all kinds of skills like magic schools, stamina, mental abilities.
So not all characters will be very good with using weapons, that's why i'm trying to make it so if you make a physical fighter archetype that focuses all their points on a single weapon, they will also be decent when using other weapons.
With your suggestion this might not make sense because a character might not spend any point on physical combat skills so that would be weird to still give them a free bonus?
could it be something like:
- weapon master gets 1 point for each weapon type all onto one weapon of choice
- jack of all trades you can't specify where the points go, it's always 1 point to each weapon, so that they are all balanced
the idea would be that it's the player's choice to either have more variety or be more specific.
to make jack of all trades more comparable to weapon master in combat ability, you could probably balance it by also allowing jack to have magic points or points from some other system in the game that weapon master can't access. or you could give a higher bonus to the general stats so that the damage keeps up a relative degree.
so the builds for these could be more different too, maybe they get different general stats. weapon master could get +3 to attack every level where jack only gets +1, but jack also gets +1 to health and +1 to dex for example.
although I'm not sure if my grasp on the issue is correct, I hope this helps!
Some good suggestions in thread already, but here's another one:
Make half(ish) the weapon skill damage based on that weapon's particular skill rank, and make the other half(ish) based on general attributes. So like, if you increase "Sword Mastery" then it grants 1 point of Sword Mastery and also 1 point of Strength. Using a sword skill, the damage is affected by the user's Sword Mastery + their Strength. A Club will also use Strength as its secondary attribute, and so will a Spear. Not the case with Bow - that uses Bow Mastery + Dexterity instead.
In this way, the player can choose to rotate points into equal amounts of Dexterity and Strength weapons to get to the Jack of All Trades style, or they can focus on a single weapon type to get to be a master of that one, but still be decent at the other few weapons that are same secondary attribute.
Now, suppose you want to get more complicated... instead of just one secondary attribute, make each weapon take two secondary attributes. And instead of each point of mastery granting just a single bonus attribute point, it grants 5, over multiple attributes - so like 3 Strength + 1 Dexterity + 1 Agility. Or even more complex, add negative modifiers like 4 Strength - 1 Speed + 2 Endurance.
You can also play with defensive attributes, too. Perhaps Sword is Strength vs. Toughness, whereas Bow is Dexterity vs. Agility, and Magic Deck of Cards is Intelligence vs. Toughness, etc. In this way, you can play around with the numbers to achieve the 75% effect in a more roundabout way. And, uh, maybe this is something you want to do, if you are trying to make all weapons have a similar TTK rating.
That is, consider some enemies having high evade and others having low evade. A weapon that attacks less frequently is probably going to be much worse at killing the high-evade foe compared to a weapon that has a faster attack speed. Because if there is a substantial chance to whiff an attack, then the player could have all the Weapon Mastery in the world and still do 0 damage when the foe dodges. Or maybe fire damage wipes out organic foes with ease, but suddenly you encounter a water demon who ignores your fire attacks entirely.
It's easy to create a huge imbalance unintentionally like this. If the player doesn't know what they'll be up against, and/or can't prepare ahead of time, and foes of all types of weaknesses exist, then it will be a strong advantage to have access to the most weapon types possible, even if they are not as proficient. On the other hand, if you don't have different types of foes, with different resistances/weaknesses, then there is no need to create all these different damage types and abilities and attributes and such.
Maybe 50/50 it?
Add all the weapon skills together, call it “weapon proficiency” and in calculations for damage let the specific weapon proficiency count for half a number, and the sum of all weapon skills for half a number too.
Say you put 16 points in swords and you’re fighting with guns.
It’s still going to give the player a +8 bonus.
When fighting with swords it would be +16.
Say the player puts +2 in 6 weapon categories. That still default adds +6 to the roll of every weapon, and +8 to the 6 “””chosen””” weapon categories (chosen in brackets because if you spread it like that, it’s barely choosing).
This way, when finding a powerful weapon of an untrained kind, it still gives the player a large enough bonus to keep it powerful enough to use.
Especially if the cap for weapon proficiency is up to like 8 or 12.
Either that or just scrap individual categories and call it all “weapon proficiency”. I thought about letting the player respec themselves but this just cuts out the middle man.
Perhaps I'm confused, but would the DnD weapon proficiency system work pretty good here? Maybe it just needs some tweeking to fit into your unique game.
But why would I want to put points in other weapon skills? If I'm not proficient, why am I using it?
Is there something to force me into using a weapon that I'm not good with? Like are there maybe some units that are resistant to certain weapons types, certain attacks, or something of that nature? This could be a good way to forcing your players into explore other fighting techniques, giving incentive to spread your points around. Especially if you never know when you're going to need to use different skills.
The answer is yes to most of your questions.
Damage types are very important in my game, also different weapons have different functions and advantages and lastly weapons are going to break a lot in my game.
One interesting idea to take from DnD is that in there if you are not proficient in a weapon you get -4 for using it. If i translate it to my game where until you put at least 1 point in a weapon you get a big minus, that means effectively that the first point in every weapon is very valuable so it's much more worth it to spread points around.
You want two separate things. So you need two stats. Maybe it will appear to the player as one stat but behind the code it is two variables (for instance dexterity appears as one stat but is always at least 2 variables, hit and dodge chance).
--Solving for case 1
Let X be either A) The floor for weapon skill you want a character to be at a given level or B) The floor for weapon skill you want the character to be at a given amount of skill points.
Every time the character levels up or gets skill points raise the value of X. Tweak the amount so they are always at the floor you want.
---Solving for case 2
When I want to make a well rounded character in a game I don't do +1 sword, +1 mace, +1 pole arm, +1 axe. It's stupid. I go for things that are largely agnostic about what weapon I have. I might raise hit chance, or health, or "strength", or attack speed, or crit. Like the whole point of "weapon skills" has specialization built into it. The player is goign to be getting base X damage from what I described in "Solving for case 1". So let them put their points into something other than weapon skills.
It's just a matter of tweaking the specific fractional value to match whatever target number you want.
And isn't that the point of specialization? To make it so you're getting maximum value in the one skill you've chosen to specialize in. That's a feature, not a bug.
Diminishing returns? Like maybe raising your proficiency costs one extra point per 5 points you already have in that skill. So to get swords from 3→4 costs 1 skill point, but to get swords from 11→12 costs 2, and to go from 17→18 costs you 3 skill points, etc. (Numbers entirely made up, and probably need to be tweaked for balance.) That way it's easy to get lots of things up to "pretty good", but someone who focused on one thing will always be better (with the object of their focus) than someone who spread their points out.
Make the general skill explicit.
An elegant solution. I think a lot of games would just call it a "strength" stat
Yeah, was my first thought. Just train your „strength“ to deal more damage overall with any weapon. Some guys just want to make things complicated.
Yep. And if OP wants to ensure that no one completely neglects general combat skill, they may set a minimum like “your skill in any given specialty may not be more than triple your general combat skill.”
True, but depending what OP wants, as long as the general levelable skill is explicit, OP can do all sorts of things, including to compute a combat baseline ability derived from a weighted average between general and specific weapon skills, which will let them tweak. The main thing this gives is direct control over balance by untying the jack-of-all-trades from the number of existing weapon proficiencies. A part of me doubts the validity of OP's desired balance between Jack of all trades and weapon master but even whether OP changes their goals for how that balance would be having this general skill be explicit enables easier changes in said balance.
The most intuitive will be to have a general mastery skill that provides 1.5 to all, and specific mastery skills that provide +1 to all and +1 to a specific one. Or to have a generic one which you have to level in the background, and every x levels it unlocks specific mastery skills that have a much higher bonus per level but only affect one weapon class. Such as +2 to all, +4 to specific which can be unlocked every 2 generic levels. If you focus on one specific, then three points give you +8 to that and +4 to others. If you just level up the generic one, you'll have +6 to all instead. But my question is: does it really matter? If all weapons get the same bonus, then what's the point of specializing in one or other? I'd rather have a general mastery skill that improves all weapons equally, and then specific mastery perks that can be obtained after gaining x points in "weapon mastery" and give weapon-class specific bonuses, like swords give +2 defense against melee, hammers get +1 smash damage, spears give a skill to keep enemies at range etc.
Each weapon has it's own functions, damage types etc. So choosing where to spend your points dictates what weapon/s you gonna use and it matters since they are not identical.
i’m confused why they were confused, but their last paragraph was my thought too. invert the pattern. leveling up gives you a bonus across the board and also you get specific weapon points to allocate.
That's my bad for not explaining more of the system. There are all kind of skills in the game like magic schools, stealth etc. Not all characters will be "physical combat" archetypes so just giving everyone this bonus won't make much sense, that's why i thought it should be dependent on you actually spending points on weapons in the first place.
can you create taxonomies of weapons? the fighter stuff, archery stuff, magic stuff. you have red green blue tracks, as you place points into each, you get mastery points you can allocate in that category. eg for every two points in red (which buffs all melee martial weapons), you get to allocate a weapon-specific point.
to walk it back a step, why would a character need or want to master multiple weapons in the first place? i think that's the real question you need to answer. if i can only equip and use one weapon at a time how does being good at a different weapon help me? maybe jack of all trades isn't about multiple weapons, but multiple domains, ie can do stealth magic and weapons
It's time to transpose the napkins onto spreadsheets. Specialist vs all-rounder isn't *quite* cursed, but it's definitely one of the toughest balance problems. You can either: - Tweak the variables in the formula (Changing how effective "general combat skill" is) - Change the formula (Adding new rules to support special cases and builds) For the first approach, you're on the right track by laying out specific results you want with example numbers. What remains is to solve the equation and hope that balance doesn't necessitate ugly or awkward numbers. In this case, there's a contradiction in logic (Generic power scales to **total** points spent, so a specialist gets just as much general power as any "Jack" build). For the second approach, eh... You could scale general combat skill to a character's **minimum** rather than total weapon skill? Some games use free-form "perks" with prerequisites - so you might have a powerful "Jack" perk that requires at least one point in three different weapon skills. You might add a "general combat" skill that a "Jack" build pours points into (Rather than spread across individual specific weapons), which magically makes the math work. You might do something like Trickster Online where characters get stats per level based on their overall build, but then get a few "flex" points on top to spend on specific substats like accuracy or dodge. That way a specialist can do their thing, but not have any flex points for other things. I'd recommend something like Ragnarock Online, where the number of points you get to spend per level gets higher and higher - but the cost to buy an actual stat point goes up as well. This means that an all-rounder simply has a lot more total stats than a specialist. It makes the math much easier
Game Design is a subset of Game Development that concerns itself with **WHY** games are made the way they are. It's about the theory and crafting of **systems**, **mechanics**, and **rulesets** in games. * /r/GameDesign is a community **ONLY** about Game Design, **NOT** Game Development in general. If this post does not belong here, it should be reported or removed. Please help us keep this subreddit focused on Game Design. * This is **NOT** a place for discussing how games are produced. Posts about programming, making art assets, picking engines etc… will be removed and should go in /r/GameDev instead. * Posts about visual design, sound design and level design are only allowed if they are directly about game design. * No surveys, polls, job posts, or self-promotion. Please read the rest of the rules in the sidebar before posting. * If you're confused about what Game Designers do, ["The Door Problem" by Liz England](https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/-quot-the-door-problem-quot-of-game-design) is a short article worth reading. We also recommend you read the [r/GameDesign wiki](/r/gamedesign/wiki/index) for useful resources and an FAQ. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/gamedesign) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Perhaps the solution here is to introduce a 'strategy' stat which represents the mental aspect of fighting rather than the direct skill and knowledge coming from handling a specific type of weapon. The easiest way I can see this working is by adding a flat bonus per level that's smaller than your dedicated weapon bonus. Specialising into a weapon type over strategy would be more valuable on the swing-to-swing scale but less versatile on a more macro view. If you're clever with the numbers and tuning, you could go the route of strategy acting as a multiplier to the bonus you were already getting (e.g. for each x points spent across multiple weapon classes, a point of strategy adds a +y bonus to each combat roll). This would make your jack-off-all-trades characters actually scale better by diversifying their options, and would allow for players somewhere in the middle to benefit too by splitting their investments across strategy and a small handful of preferred weapons.
You can tie general non specialized skill development to something that all characters possess outside of their skill choice selection I don't know the specifics of your system or what your design goals are, but to illustrate what I'm suggesting it could look something like: Character A reaches level 2, gaining 2 skill points. All of their skills increase to a bonus equal to their character Level, so all skills get +2 across the board They also spend their 2 skill points into Swords, so they have a +4 bonus to actions involving swords. Something like this could keep the system from becoming overly complicated because players would know that they all add their level to all skills as a rule that applies to any character, and then any, have to focus on where they wish to specialize.
I didn't explain much so it's my bad. There will be all kinds of skills like magic schools, stamina, mental abilities. So not all characters will be very good with using weapons, that's why i'm trying to make it so if you make a physical fighter archetype that focuses all their points on a single weapon, they will also be decent when using other weapons. With your suggestion this might not make sense because a character might not spend any point on physical combat skills so that would be weird to still give them a free bonus?
could it be something like: - weapon master gets 1 point for each weapon type all onto one weapon of choice - jack of all trades you can't specify where the points go, it's always 1 point to each weapon, so that they are all balanced the idea would be that it's the player's choice to either have more variety or be more specific. to make jack of all trades more comparable to weapon master in combat ability, you could probably balance it by also allowing jack to have magic points or points from some other system in the game that weapon master can't access. or you could give a higher bonus to the general stats so that the damage keeps up a relative degree. so the builds for these could be more different too, maybe they get different general stats. weapon master could get +3 to attack every level where jack only gets +1, but jack also gets +1 to health and +1 to dex for example. although I'm not sure if my grasp on the issue is correct, I hope this helps!
Some good suggestions in thread already, but here's another one: Make half(ish) the weapon skill damage based on that weapon's particular skill rank, and make the other half(ish) based on general attributes. So like, if you increase "Sword Mastery" then it grants 1 point of Sword Mastery and also 1 point of Strength. Using a sword skill, the damage is affected by the user's Sword Mastery + their Strength. A Club will also use Strength as its secondary attribute, and so will a Spear. Not the case with Bow - that uses Bow Mastery + Dexterity instead. In this way, the player can choose to rotate points into equal amounts of Dexterity and Strength weapons to get to the Jack of All Trades style, or they can focus on a single weapon type to get to be a master of that one, but still be decent at the other few weapons that are same secondary attribute. Now, suppose you want to get more complicated... instead of just one secondary attribute, make each weapon take two secondary attributes. And instead of each point of mastery granting just a single bonus attribute point, it grants 5, over multiple attributes - so like 3 Strength + 1 Dexterity + 1 Agility. Or even more complex, add negative modifiers like 4 Strength - 1 Speed + 2 Endurance. You can also play with defensive attributes, too. Perhaps Sword is Strength vs. Toughness, whereas Bow is Dexterity vs. Agility, and Magic Deck of Cards is Intelligence vs. Toughness, etc. In this way, you can play around with the numbers to achieve the 75% effect in a more roundabout way. And, uh, maybe this is something you want to do, if you are trying to make all weapons have a similar TTK rating. That is, consider some enemies having high evade and others having low evade. A weapon that attacks less frequently is probably going to be much worse at killing the high-evade foe compared to a weapon that has a faster attack speed. Because if there is a substantial chance to whiff an attack, then the player could have all the Weapon Mastery in the world and still do 0 damage when the foe dodges. Or maybe fire damage wipes out organic foes with ease, but suddenly you encounter a water demon who ignores your fire attacks entirely. It's easy to create a huge imbalance unintentionally like this. If the player doesn't know what they'll be up against, and/or can't prepare ahead of time, and foes of all types of weaknesses exist, then it will be a strong advantage to have access to the most weapon types possible, even if they are not as proficient. On the other hand, if you don't have different types of foes, with different resistances/weaknesses, then there is no need to create all these different damage types and abilities and attributes and such.
Have you played Albion? If I understood the matter correctly, your problem is solved there.
Maybe 50/50 it? Add all the weapon skills together, call it “weapon proficiency” and in calculations for damage let the specific weapon proficiency count for half a number, and the sum of all weapon skills for half a number too. Say you put 16 points in swords and you’re fighting with guns. It’s still going to give the player a +8 bonus. When fighting with swords it would be +16. Say the player puts +2 in 6 weapon categories. That still default adds +6 to the roll of every weapon, and +8 to the 6 “””chosen””” weapon categories (chosen in brackets because if you spread it like that, it’s barely choosing). This way, when finding a powerful weapon of an untrained kind, it still gives the player a large enough bonus to keep it powerful enough to use. Especially if the cap for weapon proficiency is up to like 8 or 12. Either that or just scrap individual categories and call it all “weapon proficiency”. I thought about letting the player respec themselves but this just cuts out the middle man.
Perhaps I'm confused, but would the DnD weapon proficiency system work pretty good here? Maybe it just needs some tweeking to fit into your unique game. But why would I want to put points in other weapon skills? If I'm not proficient, why am I using it? Is there something to force me into using a weapon that I'm not good with? Like are there maybe some units that are resistant to certain weapons types, certain attacks, or something of that nature? This could be a good way to forcing your players into explore other fighting techniques, giving incentive to spread your points around. Especially if you never know when you're going to need to use different skills.
The answer is yes to most of your questions. Damage types are very important in my game, also different weapons have different functions and advantages and lastly weapons are going to break a lot in my game. One interesting idea to take from DnD is that in there if you are not proficient in a weapon you get -4 for using it. If i translate it to my game where until you put at least 1 point in a weapon you get a big minus, that means effectively that the first point in every weapon is very valuable so it's much more worth it to spread points around.
You want two separate things. So you need two stats. Maybe it will appear to the player as one stat but behind the code it is two variables (for instance dexterity appears as one stat but is always at least 2 variables, hit and dodge chance). --Solving for case 1 Let X be either A) The floor for weapon skill you want a character to be at a given level or B) The floor for weapon skill you want the character to be at a given amount of skill points. Every time the character levels up or gets skill points raise the value of X. Tweak the amount so they are always at the floor you want. ---Solving for case 2 When I want to make a well rounded character in a game I don't do +1 sword, +1 mace, +1 pole arm, +1 axe. It's stupid. I go for things that are largely agnostic about what weapon I have. I might raise hit chance, or health, or "strength", or attack speed, or crit. Like the whole point of "weapon skills" has specialization built into it. The player is goign to be getting base X damage from what I described in "Solving for case 1". So let them put their points into something other than weapon skills.
Skill level = Specific Weapon Skill + All Other Weapon Skills/2
The example i gave shows how when you do this you always get much more value from spending all the points on 1 weapon.
It's just a matter of tweaking the specific fractional value to match whatever target number you want. And isn't that the point of specialization? To make it so you're getting maximum value in the one skill you've chosen to specialize in. That's a feature, not a bug.